First, I'm reminded of a remark made by an energy attorney friend who has fought destructive uranium, coal and oil and gas energy development for almost 30 years, that..."solar is just like any other industrial energy development". He was right.

Oil and gas development has site specific well pad surface impacts, but enormous below ground, water and air quality/climate impacts. Industry has, over the years, reduced surface impacts (at least in theory, if not practice) by drilling multiple wells from a single well pad and spacing them out.

Industrial solar impacts 100% of the surface for literally square miles (see the photo of the first phase construction for BrightSource/ISEGS below). Power tower technology also has significant bat/avian impacts as the towers can be over 650-feet tall (that's nearly as high as the tallest skyscraper in Denver). Visit the Basin and Range Watch website to see more images of what industrial solar development really looks like.

But the bottom line is this: Both oil and gas and industrial solar destroy functioning ecosystems and millions of acres of our public lands are being offered to industry for both forms of energy extraction.

Many unproven assumptions underlie arguments in favor of industrial solar; For example, that it will reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. Yet, no life-cycle analysis has been conducted to quantify construction emissions, transportation, transmission/SF6, lost carbon sequestration values and other large-scale cumulative impacts.

Many people, even those you would expect to know better, believe deserts are inhospitable places that support little life. It will come as a surprise that our southwestern deserts are among the most species-rich ecosystems in the US, and, according to a recent report by the Endangered Species Coalition, among the most threatened by climate change. (Desert soils are also very good at sequestering carbon).

Not surprisingly, industry supporters have worked hard to downplay the impacts from big solar and the value of deserts. Also, tremendous political pressure has greased the fast-track wheels for dozens of massive solar and wind developments.

They've gotten away with it because nothing on this scale had ever been built before. But as construction on solar projects in California proceeds, (they are still years away from generating any actual electricity), we are beginning to see the reality.

The Los Angeles times report, "Sacrificing the desert to save the Earth" is among the first to expose the emerging story that impacts from industrial solar projects are likely to be much worse than "predicted".

For example, desert tortoise abundances on the 5.6-square-mile BrightSource/ Ivahpah site were exponentially higher - more than 750 - up from the original estimate of 32. After project approval, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had to acknowledge that more than 3,300 endangered desert tortoises would be killed or relocated (with low survivability) as a result of a single project.

While "ground-truthing" on big solar is just getting under way, over 15 projects on 35,000 acres have been approved, and more are on the BLM priority fast-track. If allowed to go forward, the DOE/BLM solar industrial plan could impact millions of acres of intact, ecologically valuable public lands and render our southwestern deserts a fragmented wasteland.

In a somewhat shocking move, NRDC, The Wilderness Society, The Nature Conservancy and others signed a joint letter to BLM with industrial solar developers, including BrightSource, NRG Solar, Pacific Gas and Electric and SolarReserve, protesting the limitations of the same Solar Energy Zone's(SEZ's) these environmental groups are claiming will help industry avoid environmentally sensitive areas (Also see Mojave Desert Blog).

The rational for destroying more public lands does not hold up, especially given the second big hole in Ms. Wald's logic. And that is her failure to acknowledge that point of use distributed solar has already scaled up faster and more cheaply than industrial solar.

A recent UCLA study found enough commercial and residential rooftops and parking lots (generally lumped together as "rooftop solar", or distributed generation, "DG") in Los Angeles County to generate 19,000 megawatts -- enough clean energy to meet the city's typical energy demand. Other cities, including New York City, are following suit by mapping their rooftop solar potential.

Over half of Germany's renewable energy is owned by citizens and farmers, not absentee utility companies and corporations. The gains in efficiency, local jobs and energy savings are much greater when solar and wind are distributed more democratically. (See Community Power, by Al Weinrub for a good overview on the superior community benefits of local DG).

Just as Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy, China, Japan and India are doing, the US could install thousands of Gigawatts of solar PV in the vast urban landscapes already devoted to human needs. What is lacking in the US is the adoption of proven policy incentives like Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) and German-style feed-in-tariffs (FIT). (See Climate Progress for a good overview on the power of FITS).

Remote central-station solar requires years, or even decades to permit and build, and requires costly new transmission that is highly inefficient (7-12% line losses). It also commits us to a path-dependency that could preclude taking the more desert-friendly, efficient and cost-effective distributed path.

There really is no doubt - solar generation in the already built environment is faster, cheaper, more democratic, efficient and better for local economies and the environment than industrial solar. (Also see Rocky Mountain Institute, "Obama's Renewable Energy Plan: Let's Raise the Roof")

One has to wonder why NRDC and other industry-friendly environmental groups cling stubbornly to a misguided policy that is in direct conflict with their purported mission to protect the environment. Could the answer lie in the fact that current board members and former influential players (like R.F. Kennedy, Jr., John Bryson and Carl Pope) are themselves heavily invested in these projects?

Isn't it time to focus on proven policies that cash in on the 60% efficiency dividend and generate the energy where its used rather than fueling an increasingly divisive and confusing policy of advocating for the unnecessary destruction of our public and other valuable undeveloped lands?

The information and views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and not necessarily those of RenewableEnergyWorld.com
or the companies that advertise on this Web site and other publications. This blog was posted directly by the author and was not reviewed for
accuracy, spelling or grammar.

49 Comments

GerryR. What you writing has humbled me. If there is any way to put a sane candidate on the Presidential ticket an overwhelming number of us would vote for that person. I personally refuse to do anything illegal because I don't want to be shot and killed as an eco-terrorist or put in prison indefinitely without trial. The real terrorists are the coal, oil, "renewable energy giants" and our own government.

In the right upper area overlaying the following video clip is an advertisement for Clean Coal, Americaspower.org.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2012/03/08/nr-costello-kurtz-double-standard.cnn

Gerry and all. I'm not sure that anything will stop these monsters. I don't like to just send links to other information but our own wind opposition group is fighting a battle to just keep our homes. Please check out the site under Bob Moran's posting. The President of the Friends of Mojave lives in the white house in on of the recent photos that was posted. He faces having to sell his home at a horribly reduced price, his life savings because Kern County Calif. has a 500 foot setback from property lines. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tehachapi-Communities-for-Responsible-Energy-Development/210632038973095

GerryR. What you writing has humbled me. If there is any way to put a sane candidate on the Presidential ticket an overwhelming number of us would vote for that person. I personally refuse to do anything illegal because I don't want to be shot and killed as an eco-terrorist or put in prison indefinitely without trial. The real terrorists are the coal, oil, "renewable energy giants" and our own government.

In the right upper area overlaying the following video clip is an advertisement for Clean Coal, Americaspower.org.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2012/03/08/nr-costello-kurtz-double-standard.cnn

Gerry and all. I'm not sure that anything will stop these monsters. I don't like to just send links to other information but our own wind opposition group is fighting a battle to just keep our homes. Please check out the site under Bob Moran's posting. The President of the Friends of Mojave lives in the white house in on of the recent photos that was posted. He faces having to sell his home at a horribly reduced price, his life savings because Kern County Calif. has a 500 foot setback from property lines. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tehachapi-Communities-for-Responsible-Energy-Development/210632038973095

We have new neighbors in our small town. Soon it will be spring and they will start carping about the smell of manure tips being turned over and hydraulic cannons fertilizing the big corn fields nearby. They will not notice that constructing their little empires obliterated another 1/3 acre of class 1 farmland per household. They may even start to complain about all the farmers with solar systems in their side yards. They will probably vote for someone that will compel farmers to stop producing manure and slash their solar FiT. They will think they are environmentalists because they live in the 'country'.

Here's a numerical consideration of desert destruction versus climate change. Arizona through recent adjustments has ~84,000 acres devoted to open pit coal mining. It also plays host to 9 of 22 coal ash dumps in the US officially listed as hazardous. This land will never be the same, ever. Nothing normal lives there. From this, they derive approximately 22000 million kWh while producing over 100 million tons of GHG. The yield from a solar farm of equivalent area would be in the neighborhood of 78000 million kWh (high efficiency c-Si modules on trackers). By comparison, more productive use of the land and much less destructive; in fact, except for an ~8% land use for tracker bases and infrastructure and ~50% shading, relatively benign to the ecosystem, even before one considers climate change as a factor. Yet, the latter thing is what the author eschews - yet again, renewable energy shot at by friendly fire.
Claim to fame: Arizona has the fastest GHG emissions rate of growth in the U.S. Choices: 1) business as usuall (the implication of the title) or 2) chip away at the problem.

The better article would be titled "Do we need to destroy the Desert to create climate change?". Unfortunately, we're all 'bozos on this bus' including the author. But let's concretize this just a little by taking Arizona as a fine example.
1. Home to some of the worst urban sprawl in the US featuring Pheonix with a picayune population density of 2785 per square mile.
2. Until recently, home to the most poluting power plant in the US with emissions so high that it created smog in the Grand Canyon.
3. Renewable energy sources in decline from 15.4% to 6.2% in the last 15 years.
4. Profligate power user at 11,488 kWh per capita 65% higher than California but with residential use 113% higher than California.
5. No cap on greenhouse emissions
6. Does not require new residential and commercial buildings to meet energy efficiency standards.
7. Produces 35.5% of electricity from coal and 2/3 in total from fossil fuels.
Overall, rampant and almost uncontrolled population growth in energy inefficient buildings driving demand for energy and ramping up GHG production. The effects on the desert are huge.
Lets consider for a moment the University of Arizona (featured in the author's bio) which historically was one of the first institutions to hack up a piece of the desert, successfully teraforming over 350 acres into a combination of hardscape and alien biospheres, not including all of the surrounding infrastructure, accomodations, etc. It's one thing to consume the space but quite another to unnecessarily transform the environment with a lot of landscaping, no matter how attractive.
However, it's clear to see that AZ as a whole in on the side of increasing climate change, not against it. While human presence always imposes a burden on the environment, do you need to turn the desert into golf courses and redundant airstrips? Do you need to splatter subdivisions thinly across the landscape? Do you need to waste electricity when relying primarily on fossil fuels?

Scott, You're correct. There are better ways that originally were going to be used...right of ways. However, much of the wind and solar are being developed on leased and private properties, altering the initial model. Here in Kern County, CA, the Planner calls it a "Gold Rush", wishing this was still the 1970's. Free enterprise. The same free enterprise that has brought the United States to its knees, the country where 1 in 7 people are on food stamps.

There's a much better way of implementing solar than by destroying virgin land: use the rights-of-way that have already been destroyed: the roads going through the desert and everywhere else. America has over 28,000 square miles of asphalt and concrete surfaces exposed to the sun. Why not make use of it while rebuilding the infrastructure, creating the smart grid, establishing an EV recharging network everywhere, creating millions of new full-time jobs, all while putting an end to our need for fossil fuels?

Please visit http://www.solarroadways.com before jumping to any negative conclusions.

Our textured glass road surface samples passed testing last week for vehicles traveling at a mean speed of 80mph on a wet surface. As soon as the snow melts here in north Idaho, we'll break ground on our prototype solar parking lot. It will be tested under all sunlight and weather conditions for a year. We'll soon start a progress page and share photos, videos, and results on our website.

djdyar. You just confirmed my suspicion that a lot of readers get to the first point they think they can refute and then comment without REALLY reading the article! Apologies accepted. Truth be known, I spend a great deal of time fighting dirty energy (how can I not living in Colorado?). Being an ecologist (MSci/not the "tree hugger" kind) I couldn't fall for narrow "carbonentalist" solutions that assume we can continue to hack our remaining intact ecosystems to pieces and expect to "save" the planet. It's simply repeating the same old energy thinking that got us into this place to begin with. I stand by my original thesis, that by reducing our energy waste by 60% (the low hanging fruit that nearly everyone ignores) we can generate the energy we need from the sun, wind, water, geothermal, biofuels, combined heat & power and various methods of storage, right where we need it and let the deserts, and all the wonderful creatures that dwell in them, alone. Another point that seems to get missed, is that deserts are among the most species-rich ecosystems in the US and among the most threatened by climate change. None of us are happy that the mainstream "environmentalists" sold out to big energy industrialist (solar and natural gas), but they need to be called on their wasteful and confusing incrementalism. We need to be clear that its the grassrooters on the front lines (like those fighting Shell that sandcanyongal points out) that are making a real difference.

NO PLAN TO GET OFF OF OIL: Oil and energy companies go nuts.
Shell sues environmental groups to score drilling rights
By msnbc.com staff
Shell, the global oil and gas company, sued more than a dozen environmental groups that oppose offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The environmental groups hope to block Shell's plans to drill exploratory wells this summer in the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.
The idea behind the suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Anchorage, is to beat environmental activists to court. Shell has already spent $4 billion on the project but has not yet started drilling.

seddy. Last point. Yes it is time to get real about the environment. Enough. You must live in a city because you are clueless about nature. Turn off your tv. Learn about nature. Reality is that we are only part of the earth, just another animal sharing resources. We seem to think we own everything, instead. You get real.

seddy. Utility scale solar should go on roofs in cities. They're already disturbed to the point they will never be natural again. Further, there is no plan to get off oil. Why do you think the U.S. used our young men and women as human shields to occupy Iraq? Look up Iraq oil contracts. There are at least 30-32 of them, and isn't there more drilling near where the horrible disaster occurred in the Gulf? You're very naive. I'd like to see wind and solar along the shores of Redondo Beach, Marina del Rey, Newport Beach and Coronado, Malibu and Capitola as well. It's closest to the high density areas.

Utility-scale solar has impacts – all development activity does. However, to attempt to argue that the impacts of utility-scale solar and oil and gas exploration and production are equal is irresponsible and ignores the science. A number of experts, including Clinton Andrews of Rutgers University and Dan Kammen of UC Berkeley have researched the net impacts of oil and gas production and utility-scale solar development. The findings are conclusive: oil and gas production is far more damaging to our air, land, water and our nation's efforts to curb climate change.

The truth is, we do know this: continuing to burn fossil fuels will exacerbate climate change, pollute our air and water and directly impact thriving ecosystems. We also know that utility-scale solar can reduce its impacts by locating thoughtfully, implementing "low-impact" designs and by using dry-cooling to reduce water.

Oil and gas development and exploration take up more than 1,700 times more public land than solar. According to a Wilderness Society analysis, over 50 million acres of public lands are already available to oil and gas in five states – CO, NM, MT, UT, WY. To date, 9 solar projects were given the green light on public lands in California as of the end of 2011, totaling approximately 40,000 acres.

California currently has in place some of the world's most progressive programs to encourage the deployment of rooftop- and small-scale solar. It's a great and much-needed start - but it's just one part of the solution. We need to develop all forms of renewable energy if we're to meet our energy and climate challenges with a measure of success.

We can do this responsibly. It's time to get real about the environmental and climate challenges that we face, and begin taking the steps to address them. Utility-scale solar is a critical part of the solution.

By the way, I owe you an apology. I actually agree with many, if not most of your points. I spend all my time trying to convince the "ignorant masses" that we really don't want to destroy our environment. Most of my energy is used to convince them to stop, listen and then THINK for themselves.

The biggest obstacles usually are the things they've heard from Fox News, et al....as well as our green brethren who come out hardline with points that immediately turn them off before we can even get them to listen.

I was simply frustrated because you started off on a negative point and I was tired and assumed the whole article would continue down that path. I'm a fairly hard core green and if it was enough to make me jump to a conclusion, then I'm sure it was like that for anyone we'd actually want to influence.

You're clearly intelligent, passionate and have good points to make and I want people to stop and listen to you. To all of us.

I deal with this when I argue against Big Oil. I've found that absolutely ZERO conservatives will argue with me when I begin the conversation with: "I hate that our children are over in the Middle East, getting maimed and killed so that we can keep driving our gas guzzlers. Yes, some people need them, but so many of us drive them without even thinking about what it does to our troops....who are really our kids. How many of us have family and friends affected by that?"

By definition, conservatives are not allowed to disagree with that point. :-)

ANONYMOUS
February 28, 2012

1) Desert ecosystems are amazing.
2) Living in the desert takes an enormous amount of resource to provide US standards of living, such as air conditioning. Desert enthusiasts who live in the desert must recognize their footprint, especially in cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Those who recognize unique desert life must recognize those harsh conditions are not built for many humans.
3) What opportunities beside a PV culture do desert enthusiasts recommend for electricity? PV needs stability which is why the author suggested FITs, but it also needs many, many more property owners to actually purchase systems to keep PV companies in business.
4) What sacrifices are desert enthusiasts willing to make? If "profiteers" are solar companies with an agenda of changing the paradigm of a trillion dollar energy business, then how much work are desert enthusiasts willing to do for no personal gain to reshape how electricity is delivered to their neighbor's house, so we can all have internet access, air conditioning, and phone chargers?

Thanks David, you've made good points. Most of us on this blog are regular citizens but very frustrated. Personally, I'm directly affected by all the wind turbines going in throughout the Tehachapi Pass. The next wave unfolding is industrial solar. Most of us started out being nice guys and gals about it.

The dollars and cents of rooftop solar technology doesn't bring in the big profits like industrial energy development. The incentives for well funded investors are cash grants, raw land property tax rather than assessments based on improved land, depreciation that starts over again when operational facilities change hands. Conversely, there is little offset for the average citizen to invest in solar. Fiascos like the Solyndra mismanagement has rippled through the industry and just about crippled end user renewable energy stand alone growth objectives. What's really sad is that it's not legal to go gridless. One can only reduce the cost of our electric bills. For example, I have plenty of wind on my property but can't build and erect a home turbine without an expensive process of an environmental impact assessment as mandated by Kern County. If appproved and I built a turbine and hooked it up to the home, I'd still get an electric bill every month.

Sigh. You're still missing the point: I tend to be green and fight against the system but like many people, actually a vast, VAST majority of the population, I stopped reading it seriously when I saw you're opening premise.

When will we learn that simple, old saying: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

The first thing you did was to attack someone else for making an argument to use public lands for renewable energy. And the first thing any "average person" thinks is "look, the green nut-jobs can't even agree among themselves and they want us to listen to them???"

I'm sorry, but you are NOT the average person. Your passion for the subject is admirable, but you are clueless to the damage you do to your own cause.

Do you want to be "right" or do you want to stop people from destroying the desert?

Could you try this approach instead:

Solar is truly coming of age and we need to use it in the most productive way we can. We have existing structures, such as buildings in cities and parking spaces where additional solar would provide many benefits including shade for cars, cooler buildings, distributed power generation...yada yada yada....This would also be better than the use of public lands which allows a few, powerful companies to control our energy supply and causes un-necessary damage to our environment.
Why allow our public lands to be destroyed when we have even better space on existing structures....yada yada yada.

You delude yourself if you think there great numbers of people who care about our deserts and forests. It's a romantic view, but the VAST majority of the population only wants to know where the rent comes from next month.

If you want to influence people, give them a reason to listen. Make it worth their while. If you just want someone to agree with you, some of other greenies will do that.
But they already did...you've accomplished nothing here.

djdyar. You underestimate the number of people who refuse to continue allowing companies to trash the deserts and forests. What are you thinking?...living in caves? And thanks for calling me flakey. It's really appreciated. Turn off your TV for a year...then you'll realize you're being manipulated 24/7 so a small number of profiteers profit from the sheep they created. It's unfortunate you've bought into the urgent urgency media hype that the destructive junk planned for the desert is good for us. What the heck happened to r & d to develop best of breed solutions? Instead, people are citing what 3rd world countries are doing and just as nuts, to listen to corrupt politicians. Now thats flakey. Today's wind turbines are prototype level machines that have no place in wide use. GE bought that Enron crap,went with hat in hand to congress, saying It's inevitable, there's nothing else, it's here, it's the best option, it's the best course of action for the community. It's actually garbage technology and thoses companies are selling the public a bad bill of goods. I for one say - enough, like sane people globally.

No wonder conservatives laugh at us. We sound like total flakes every time we open our mouths. Have the intelligence to accept the fact that we either kill ourselves now and the few remaining humans live in caves OR accept the fact that everything we do has some effect on things around us.

Get over it and start comparing which path has the least total impact and accept it. We're not voluntarily going away, so stop with the Chicken Little routine. We have no chance to affect positive change when we screw our credibility this way.

The latest cost estimate for Desertec until 2050 runs at 666 billion Euro, 108 billion of which would be for power lines, to deliver about 700 TWh per year at 8 cents per kWh to European industrial centers.

If you are interested in a peer-reviewed reference for these figures, please search with "Desertec cost estimates".

I happen to think that this is far too modest in ambition. 700 TWh would be enough to power Germany completely, but not quite enough to bring the change at the necessary scale and speed to counter global warming. I would prefer at least ten trillion euros until 2050 invested for at least 10,000 TWh per year, which would equal about half of current world electricity use.

That of course would need to use another couple of percent of the desert areas, disturbing some more turtles and tarantulas in the process. But anyone informed about the unfortunate consequences of global warming will see that as a rather minor concern in comparison.

GerryR. On topic. It would be OK to go into the desert if other projects unrelated to solar were not under way like mining, opening up of off-road again and my personal anger, down to my soul is Ft. Irwin continuing to expand their military training area. The desert is under attack from all sides. Moly Mines is putting up 24 buildings on the CA/NV border to mine for precious metals for military products. That footprint is huge. I have pics of it.

In eastern Kern, there are active plans in their General Plan to "build out" the desert, just like Palm Springs, Ontario and everwhere else. Like I say, it won't end until we clearly reject taking what the profiteers plan to give us.

GeraldR. Knowing what we know, looking the future, either we evolve past accepting what profiteers hand to us or future generations will probably not walk the earth and will take much of the other life with us. Simple solutions like pollution devises to prevent cancers and juvenile diabetes in young children are beaten down or the companies leave the U.S. where they can dump right into the waterways. Now there are drilling contracts in the Gulf right where the spill occured 2 years ago. Birds are dropping to their deaths thanks to the profuse Wal Mart lighting in their parking lot (so. Utah). More on topic is industrial solar. I doubt that even 1% of the materials used are post consumer/post industrial materials. Mitigation to protect wildlife and the footprint on the land are merely words. It becomes an open door to continue building 'because the land is already disturbed.' Off topic again, per seat high speed rail: not designed to pull vehicles so riders can disembark and use their vehicles that will also serve as a place to bring back purchases, eliminating some of the current need for trucking and more infrastructure. Basically, you accept our fate and I'm fighting for massive change. With this said, it's easy to give up. The profiteers use mass media and bribery to maintain their wealth. They'll have people believing the earth is flat again.

@sandcanyongal -- so, you admit that you are part of the problem! You say 'None of this will change until the people take a stand without compromise' - actually, none of this will change until the people leave. You can love it or love it to death. I can spot a log tip in the woods 40 years after it was last used; I bet I could (hypothetically)spot where you live 400 years after you leave (unless they build over it).
I think this person's page sums up the problem nicely: http://brazilbrazil.com/urban.html
Let's face it, people are not going to leave. You and many others will leave your bootprints all over the micro-fauna of the desert. The best we can hope is that we develop in the best way we can.

Having smaller amounts paid to big projects under the German feed-in tariff is of course because the larger projects have less cost per kWh and therefore need less, not because the larger projects are less competetive on the market. If cost were the only factor, there would be only large-scale projects.

Fun fact about Desertec, the largest project of energy from the desert: They plan to use less than 1 percent of North African deserts to generate over 700 TWh for Europe by 2050. Search for "Desertec cost estimates" if your are interested in getting a reference for that.

If you object to using even these very small parts of desert area, you are making climate change considerably worse by opposing one of the possible large-scale solutions. This will not help wildlife, which is looking at one of the biggest extinction events in Earth's history as a consequence.

Gerry. We should do NOTHING in the desert. The desert from a distance appears stark. Not so. I live in the desert. It teems with life. I look under stones and see new life forming for the upcoming year. I see tarantula holes with the silk over the top of the holes. The desert soil is self turning, meaning that it is incredibly rich. The heat of the day, the cold of the night, the wet of winter causes the soil to turn itself over, bringing with it the dried materials that grow during the year. It is nothing less than amazing. I have burrowing owl nests along the culverts above me. I hear night birds in the moonlight and sometimes catch a glimpse of wings and hear the chirps.

My sister moved to Scottsdae when it was getting built up. Haven't been down there but can imaging the beauty is now replaced with homes. The saguara cactus have been moved to the front of homes.

None of this will change until the people take a stand without compromise. The environmental groups have already heard from me I'm one of the people who call them out.

The desert seems huge, but it's the only desert in the entire United States. Thanks for caring too.

The author's premise seems to be that there are better things you can do with a desert. Such as? Possibly a new subdivision with a golf course might be one. Yet the author eschews the use of a smaller area of land for solar power. Look at Arizona as an example of what you can do. With 5 of the top 10 American cities leading in urban sprawl, residential use of electricity at ~5140 kWh per capita puts it in the upper echelon of energy wasters with 113% more consumption than Californians. Anyone who lives, works or plays in Tempe, Scottsdale, etc is disproportionately part of the problem, both in terms of massive destruction of desert land and massive overconsumption of electricity. The author is not wanting in this regard.

@anonymous - you have a very strange idea of Germanys FiT digression scheme. It is a system to control the ramp of solar power - when the Germans are overenthusiastic about solar, the FiT drops faster. You might also have noticed that Ontario did similar things with respect to ground mount and agricultural land. Italy too. Why? Well first because ground mount systems are substantially cheaper, especially in terms of cost of energy because they are as much as 40% more productive than rooftop systems and consequently need a smaller FiT. Second, blocks of agricultural land are challenged by utility scale solar as the yield in revenue per acre for solar farms is competitive against other farming on class 3 and up agricultural land. 'Once the heavy subsidies for the farms go away solar goes away' - actually, Germany is expecting that solar will grow quite a lot under their FiT scheme. But this is old news. However, since Germany doesn't have any large deserts, I'm not sure why you bring this up here.
Note: in Ontario ground mount systems under 10kWp(AC) are still permitted on agricultural land -- quite popular actually.

GeraldR. There are no plans to back away from fossil fuels - ever. It's apparent that mining and destruction won't stop until the people force it.

I came across an article about Caterpillar coming back to the U.S after more than a decade, a manufacturing plant in Atlanta. They're also buying a Chinese coal plant and also a company in Wisconsin. Caterpillar manufacture excavating equipment.

"Song Qiushuang, chief engineer of China National Coal Mining Equipment Co Ltd, agreed and said the purchase will be beneficial to ERA Mining Machinery's international development.

"The Chinese company, of course, will get closer to the global capital market and have more opportunities," he said. "Meanwhile, for Caterpillar, the company will pay more attention to the Chinese market."

China uses about 40 percent of the global coal supply and accounts for 70 percent of underground coal mining.

"We look forward to working with ERA, ensuring our operations are world-class in terms of safety," Lavin said. "China is a very attractive mining market, especially in coal. China is one of the largest coal reserves in the world. It is still being developed." link:
http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-1/15/content_14095803.htm

A New World Order for Mining OEMs - (Wisconsin) link:
http://www.coalage.com/index.php/features/1451-a-new-world-order-for-mining-oems.html

ANONYMOUS
February 22, 2012

I guess if I ran the zoo at Tierra I wouldn't put my office in a low efficiency building with a rooftop littered with HVAC units and no solar panels and a parking lot with a motley assortment of gas guzzlers in the parking lot. Just sayin.

Other better ways to destroy the desert and get on the other side of the fight against global warming:
- drive over every square inch of it in ATVs and AWD vehicles
- drill baby drill
- dig out the coal
- build more highways
- gas and oil pipelines
- build a motor speedway
- viva Los Vegas lights
- eco tourism
- more heated swimming pools
- build more subdivisions of badly insulated houses with central air

Anonymous. I don't disagree with you at all. You and everyone else make excellent points. The fact is that the earth is heating up fast. Another fact is that our food sources are in the forests, desert and wetlands. There are 7 billion mouths to feed. There is only 1/2 acre of arible (sp?) land per person on earth. All it will take are some serious viruses, bacteria or other disaster to screw up our factory farms, etc. It's predicted that growable land like near Bakersfield may not be productive over time. In summary, the writing is on the wall and our backup food sources are being replaced for electricity. This is a bottom line.

Our mindset should be focused on survival, not compromise. People like Lorelei Oviat, the master planner from Kern Count, in writing has said, she wishes it was the 1970s again. She should be fired for incompetence for ignoring reality.

"A recent UCLA study found enough commercial and residential rooftops and parking lots (generally lumped together as "rooftop solar", or distributed generation, "DG") in Los Angeles County to generate 19,000 megawatts -- enough clean energy to meet the city's typical energy demand." And more recently, only about 10% of these rooftops were found to be structuraly able to carry the load resulting in shifts in development policies. You should also note that the above study did not classify rooftop areas in terms of shaddow restrictions, degree of air pollution, structural integrity, orientation, fire code and zoning restictions.

"Yet, no life-cycle analysis has been conducted to quantify construction emissions, transportation, transmission/SF6, lost carbon sequestration values and other large-scale cumulative impacts." Totally untrue. In fact a number of well researched peer reviewed papers have been done on this subject.

Hello again Ceal, I dug into my achives and thought it might be productive to look at the origins of approval and disregard for the future of wild American by former Pres. Bush.

Is the Endangered Species Act the Right Place to Set Climate Change Policy?
http://law-journals-books.vlex.com/vid/endangered-species-place-set-climate-57850080
http://law-journals-books.vlex.com/vid/endangered-species-place-set-climate-57850080

The solar industry would have a harder time growing if it were not for large scale plants. The 290 MW Agua Caliente is like First Solar installing solar on 86,000+ homes (3 kW/house and author's 12% upper transmission loss). Do you think it would be a shorter time frame to develop 86,000 different small projects? Unless the small scale solar group can provide evidence this many homes would otherwise have solar installed, then this desert project is a boon to the industry.

Life cycle costs for desert projects are better than rooftop solar. Parabolic troughs can have an energy payback period of 1 year: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/52186.pdf, while rooftop solar is 4 years for cheap silicon panels: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf. Therefore desert projects may actually be greener than urban projects.

Desert environmentalists probably share principles with other environmentalists such as those combating coal mountain top removal methods. The big difference is desert solar is energy evolution for a cleaner future. That is why many big players in the environmental sphere recognize ground rules should be set rather then pretending the world won't consume electricity in massive amounts.

With Desertec, part of the reason is that there is much more sun per area in Northern Africa than in Germany.

My reason is simply that I happen to think global warming is a very serious problem. One of its consequences will be a massive species extinction not confined to desert turtles. I am not convinced that there is any time left to lose.

ANONYMOUS
February 18, 2012

Karl, if you read the post more closely you will see that the author referred to Los Angeles as an example but also mentioned the 60% energy savings dividend. When we've run out of creative ideas on how to use our urbanized places and efficiency savings, then maybe we should consider the desert, but why start there when we have plenty of other places to solarize first?

Exactly, that should be the point one would expect you to make under the headline of the article. But you are not making it. You raise some objections about environmental impact and cost, but nowhere you even begin to explain that global warming can be stopped without using the deserts. Doing so would require modeling like McKay is providing.

For example, you point to Germany, which leads the world right now with 25 GW solar capacity deployed. But that only resulted in providing 3% of consumed electricity last year (18.52 TWh). I am all for that but fail to see how that has already solved the problem.

One might also mention that Desertec, the most advanced "Energy from the desert" project world wide, is a project of German Industry with support from the German government and the EU Commission.

Under the UCLA study you mentioned, the rooftop solar potential of the whole county can provide the electricity for the city if everyone else agrees to use nothing. And electricity demand is quite different from providing the "energy demand". The city has only 5,536 MW of potential (page 5), enough only for less than 30% of demand, and only of electricity demand.

I appreciate all of your comments and would like to reiterate to v-bruce-stenswick-62270, Karl-Friedrich Lenz and Anonymous that my point is that there is plenty of evidence (UCLA/NYC studies, Germany, etc.) to show that we DON'T have to destroy the desert to deal effectively with climate change (energy use is only part of the solution), nor should we. Distributed, point of use solar is faster, cheaper, more efficient and secure than desert-destroying industrial solar and there is more than enough space in the urban environment that is already serving human needs. We would do better to leave Big Solar in the dust.

ANONYMOUS
February 17, 2012

Sandcanyongal (comment 11): No, we do not underestimate the impact of solar power development on the land, and that is not the point. The point is this: solar power development - at its greatest extent - has an environmental impact that is less than a fraction of one percent of that of fossil fuel development. It is very clear you do have even an elementary grasp of the scope of fossil fuel mining. Your comments suggest you have never seen fossil fuel development, nor the equipment and vehicles used to mine coal, oil and natural gas. As a beginning, you might look up "mountaintop mining" for coal on the internet, and spend some time reflecting on the videos and images of what it takes to produce dirty energy.

Again, as I said above, I completely agree that rooftop solar will always be cheaper as a desert project, especially when you are talking about California vs. California, with no difference in solar resources.

If you have a rooftop solar system bought twenty years ago and already paid for, you have no capital cost, no fuel cost, no maintenance cost, no cost to pay somebody else's profit, no network delivery cost, and no taxes. Hard to beat for anyone.

That does not prove, as does the article above not prove, that rooftop solar will be enough to deal with global warming. It will certainly make a contribution, but getting 100% of energy (not only of electricity) from renewable energy is not an easy task. I recommend having a look at David McKay's simulations (search for "without the hot air").

To number 8 and 9. You underestimate the footprint on the land. Take away the actual terrain impacts for now because I'll post those later. There has been a solar plant in process of being built along the 14 freeway near Lancaster, CA for about 4 years. Raw materials are mined, manufactured, transported, then erected. For the purpose of this discussion only, here is something from Vestas (see Pg 13)
http://www.vestas.com/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=Files/Filer/EN/Sustainability/LCA/LCA_V112_Study_Report_2011.pdf

The footprint and also the emissions are monumental. The trucks, shovels and equipment are many time gas, not diesel. I hate to tell all of you that not only sun, but water for geothermal and any other energy is free one a faility is built. Maintaining a facility is not free and also use millions of gallons of water.

I agree with comment 8. No one has a problem with solar on rooftops, and there would be more if it was economical. Large solar installations are easier to manage, from a maintenance perspective and a grid perspective. And, these large scale solar installations are going through enormous permitting and environmental studies before they're allowed to construct.

Do large solar plants emit pollution during production? Is there a risk to human health? Would you rather have a solar farm near your house or an oil well?

ANONYMOUS
February 17, 2012

The pronouncements about the "environmental footprints" of solar power development, are vastly overstated. The total footprint of solar power necessary to power the demands of the USA for the remainder of this century amounts to about one half of one percent of the lands already obliterated by the fossil fuel industry over the course of the past century. Unlike a solar power station, a fossil fuel generator requires continuous mining of new sources of fuel. In 2011, the hugely aggressive natural gas industry drilled 100,000 new wells in the 48 coterminous United States. At a nominal 2 to 6 acres per well pad, this translates into roughly 300 to 900 square miles of newly bulldozed land. This footprint does not count lands also bulldozed for associated roads, pipelines, compressor stations, storage tanks, and equipment lots. At this rate of scarification, the natural gas industry alone will obliterate far more land in one-half to one decade than solar installations would require to supply all USA electricity demands for the next 100 years. The energy and resources of a full frontal attack on industrial solar power should be far better used to treat the enormous, planet-changing problems imposed by fossil fuels development and use.

If desert projects don't make sense economically in the first place, there goes the need to worry about turtles. I am not convinced of that, though. The North African projects are proceeding ahead of schedule. It does help of course to get very cheap World Bank financing, the cost of which has a huge influence on cost per kWh.

I completely agree that building solar in Germany is cheaper than building it in Morocco and having to transport the energy one way or other over 3000 kilometers. Again, if we can get all energy (not only electricity) from renewable without deserts, fine with me.

First, why does the author talk about 'slowing' climate change when we should be talking about reversing it. If we have to destroy a small portion of the desert to save the planet, that seems pretty reasonable. We can easily halt any increase in GHG emissions we a much more aggressive attitude towards conservation and solar.

Ceal, thank you for your wonderful article. I'll go through some of the links and respond tomorrow. The tortoises have been hit from all sides. I wrote the top general at Ft. Irwin back in 2008 and 2009 after the botched translocation that killed most of them. Things haven't gotten better for them. Out near Cantil, the folks that manage Last Chance an old mining relic reported an army of people removing tortoises by the hundreds. Who knows if any of them survived. There were reports about 3 years ago about tortoise shells all around California City. For a federally protected species they're sure being decimated and not being protected at all, except on paper. I live in a rural area on the edge of the mojave desert and have never layed eyes on one in the 8 years I've lived here.

I lived in cities my whole life and didn't even know what the Milky Way was until my husband who was a satellite scientist showed me. It's gone again, this time, replaced by a muddy red night sky. A clear night sky is absolutely spiritual, as is a night of shooting stars. I'll never stop fighting for it, just like you. Thanks again for caring and not compromising.

To show what the title promises (desert projects are not needed) the article would need to explain that that little global warming problem people were talking about ten years ago is already well under control without any additional effort on large scale desert projects.

In reality, things are only getting worse all the time, especially in the United States.

Of course, all things equal, it makes much more sense to have your solar panels exactly at the point of consumption. That however does not prove in any way that this is sufficient as an effort.

Another point is that at present rates of development, there is not much reason to worry that all the deserts will be covered everywhere with solar panels any time soon. There should be plenty of area left for tortoises and foxes, even when a small fraction of it is used for large scale projects.

Common sense tells you, especially with PV which is very inefficient with solar energy, you want to make use of places if at all possible, where sunlight is already falling on a man made surface, like roofs, especially black ones, etc.. PV is designed to create electricity, not be an optimal surface to combat global warming, like a highly reflective white roof.
I will be mounting my PV on ground trackers which will intercept sunlight on the way to grass (not a good thing) but I will also be changing my dark grey asphalt shingled roof to white metal (a good thing). Covering light colored desert ground with something black which dumps 85% of the energy to heat, does not help to cool the desert just from a pure light energy aspect alone. Local PV in urban areas is resilient, at point of use and reduces power loading on the grid. Centralized plants do not unless they are right next to the load.
But the problem here, as always, is not the tech but the desired goal, money... and money does not care about global warming or climate change, ... money cares about money...

.....Bill

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Ceal is a biologist, researcher, consultant and grassroots energy activist. She's founder and research director for the Renewable Communities Alliance, and a founding member of Solar Done Right, a coalition of scientists, solar power and...